Handbook | Curriculum Powerpoint
11/6/08
Fourth
Grade News
Field Trip:
Next Friday, November 14th, we will be
heading to
Drivers:
Bambrick Cook Cooper Ludden
Merriman Mulick O’Connor Simmons
Streuli Tiesi
Kards for Kids:
The students have completed their card designs and
they are currently in production. They have done a wonderful job and we are
anxious to see the final products! Our Kard Sale will be next Thursday,
November 13th from 2-4pm in the 4th grade classroom. We
hope you all plan to attend. Also, don’t forget to invite other family,
friends, and neighbors!
Grandparents’ Day:
We made an error in last week’s newsletter regarding
the Grandparents’ Day Liturgy on November 24th. It will take place at 11:00 am
in the gym. Thank you to Joni Hampson for bringing this error to my
attention. We are beginning to plan the
liturgy today, so if your child would like to take part, either on their own or
with their grandparent/grandfriend, please let us know.
Pie Baking:
We are still in need of a few volunteers to help with
our Pie Baking service project on Tuesday, November 25th. We will
send home a supply list with your child next week. If you can volunteer your
time, or if you do not wish to be signed up to bring in supplies, please let us
know by the end of this week. Thank you.
Curriculum:
Math: Last Thursday the fourth graders took their test on
the decimals unit. As a whole, the students did not perform as well as we’d
hoped. We assume that this was in part due to the lack of focus in anticipation
of Halloween. Conceptually, students had difficulty lining up decimals when the
problems were not already set up for them. They are also still struggling to
extend their understanding of concepts into problem solving activities. We have
spent our math time this week reviewing these concepts and all students will be
completing a retake tomorrow. The original tests were sent home earlier this
week, after we went over them in class so the students could look at their
individual problem areas. We did not record any of these grades, so if your
child is satisfied with their score and wishes not to retake tomorrow, it is
their responsibility to return the original test to be recorded.
Social
Studies: This week we wrap up our
government unit in social studies and begin our study of Native Americans. I
have been so overwhelmed and impressed by the enthusiasm and learning that has
taken place in this unit. I am hopeful that we have produced one or two
potential politicians! As an individual who loves and appreciates democracy, I
am pleased to see such civic-minded young citizens. As a teacher, I find it
difficult to find the words to express how proud I am of their desire to learn
both in the classroom and out. Yesterday, we had an incredible discussion about
the previous nights’ elections, and I was nearly brought to tears! One of the
topics centered on how individuals felt after winners and losers were announced
and the students remarked on Obama’s gracious acceptance speech in which he
thanked and complimented his opponent; as well as McCain’s speech in which he
praised his opponent and vowed to help in any way he can. We talked about what
we can learn about winning and losing from these two incredible individuals and
I personally left the discussion not only optimistic about the near future, but
for these amazing young people to grow up to lead us all one day!
Language
Arts: Last week, our student
detectives began working in pairs to solve mysteries through close reading.
This not only boosts their reading comprehension skills, but lends itself to
logical reasoning and problem solving in mathematics as well. We are doing this
in place of a literature circle novel for the month of November. Because they
are working in pairs, this activity is to be completed at school only, so you
can expect no homework in literature until after Thanksgiving! Also, with so
many schedule disruptions due to Veterans’ Day, Kards for Kids, our field trip,
Grandparents’ Day, Pie Baking, and Thanksgiving; we will be taking a break from
spelling tests as well. In writing, we are beginning to look at narrative
writing. This week and into next, students will be practicing using dialogue.
In upcoming weeks, they will create their own narrative writing piece.
We have a lot coming up in the month of November and
are looking forward to many fun projects and activities! Please remember to
email us if you would like to take part and volunteer your time. Have a great
weekend and enjoy the day off next Tuesday!
The
Fourth Grade Team
10/30/08
Fourth Grade News
Halloween:
Just a reminder about tomorrow—the
students are allowed to wear their costume to school but it should not
interfere with regular activities (lessons, recess, etc.). We will be holding
classes as scheduled in the morning and will have a party in the afternoon. If
your child would prefer to change into their costume after lunch for the party,
they will be able to come to school in free dress until that time. Finally,
please make sure that your child’s costume is appropriate for school (no
weapons, gore, etc.) and overall dress code rules for should be taken into
consideration (tanks and mini skirts should not be worn).
Thank you to all the parents who
have volunteered time and supplies to help make our party a success…it looks
like we will be sending your kids home on quite a sugar rush tomorrow!
Election Extravaganza:
The students have done a remarkable
job on our government unit and have really gotten excited about the election
next week. We will be celebrating the end of a great unit and the appointment
of new government officials with a variety of activities, including treats from
our October birthday families and the opportunity to watch some early results
coverage in the afternoon.
On Monday morning, “candidates” will
deliver their speeches and students will be able to vote before the day is
done. On Wednesday, we will see how ASB fourth graders’ votes compare to those
of the
We have begun studying the electoral college and how we appoint a President, and I
think the students are beginning to grasp the concept of electoral versus
popular votes. This week, each student will be assigned a state and it will be
their job on election night to find out to whom that state will be casting
their votes. We understand that some of this information will not be available
due to time zones, close races, and any number of other glitches, so a good
faith effort is all we are asking for. I emailed a list of sites to families
last night that will be a good resource on election night to find this
information, but if it is unavailable, we will look it up here at school on the
5th.
Also, Tuesday night’s homework
included a worksheet on House of Representatives and voting trends. The last
question asked students to fill out the graph for voter turnout in 2008. We
will be giving a prize to the first student who can find this information after
election day and provide the source so the class can
complete this worksheet.
Field Trip:
The permission slip for our next field
trip went home in yesterday’s Wednesday envelope. We will be traveling to
Kards for Kids:
The
Fourth graders have been working very hard to complete their designs for their
individual cards these last few weeks. The cards have now been scanned and
ready for the final stages of being ready for our annual Kards for Kids
sale.
The
Open House Sale will take place on Thursday, November 13th from
2:00-4:00 in the fourth grade classroom. At this time we will be taking orders
which we hope to have filled and delivered by December 1st. The sets
will be made up of 8 cards. Each set will be selling for $10.00 a piece. You
will never run short again. Or maybe you are in charge of ordering your
business’s Christmas Cards—we do take special orders for large quantities.
Parents,
family members, friends, etc. are all welcome to come to the Open House.
Below
we have listed areas where we will need assistance. If you are available; this
will help us run a smooth and efficient sale. Please check your schedule and
email Jan at janmyers@asbschool.org.
Open
House Volunteers: Thursday, November 13th (Volunteers needed
from 2-4pm)
Tally
Day Volunteer: Monday, November 17th (volunteers can decide on
a time that works best for them!)
We
will also need volunteers to help fill the orders once they come in, but we do
not have a date for that at this point. Look for information to come home as
soon as we have it!
Grandparents’/Grand-friends’ Day:
Monday, November 24th is
Grandparents’ Grand-friends Open House and Liturgy. The school open house is
from 9:00 to 11:00 am followed by our Thanksgiving Liturgy in the gym at 1:15.
The 4th graders will be
leading this celebration. If any of the 4th grader’s grandparents or
grand-friends will be attending and would like to join them in celebrating by
participating in part of the liturgy; that would be wonderful. We will be
sending home a sign up sheet in upcoming weeks, but wanted to give you a heads
up so you can talk with grandparents ahead of time.
Bakers Grab your Aprons!
The fourth grade will be baking
pumpkin pies for Blessed Sacrament on Tuesday, November 25th from
9:00 to 12:00. The students will be preparing the pies in the morning from 9:00
until 10:30 in rotating shifts and we will be baking those pies continually
throughout the day. If you would like to help with pie prep we will need your
assistance from 9:00-10:30. If you would like to help with baking, you can sign
up for anytime throughout the day (9:00-3:00). If you can help, please email
Jan Myers at janmyers@asbschool.org.
Thanks!
The supplies needed to make the pies
will be divided among the students in the next few weeks. If you do not wish to
contribute please let us know ahead of time so Jan and Kori can arrange for the
supplies to be here on the 25th. Thank you for helping us show your
children what it really means to live as people of integrity within their own
community. They will truly experience that one person, or in our case 55
people, CAN make a difference in someone else’s life!
10/8/08
Fourth Grade News
Field trip:
It looks like we are all set for our
field trip to the state capital next week, and we are all very excited. We will
send more detailed information to our drivers next week, but we wanted to
provide a few reminders for students.
- You
MUST be in uniform on this day. No free dress coupons.
- You
need to bring a sack lunch with all disposable materials. There will not
be milk and/or hot lunch available on this day. Also, after lunch all
materials need to be thrown away before entering the
- No
electronic devises etc. will be allowed in cars except by the driver.
Leave your iPods/gameboys, etc at home!!!
Progress Reports/Conferences:
Progress reports will be coming home
with your child next Friday, October 17th. We hope that this will
give you a clear picture of your child’s current standing and growth over the
first six weeks of the year. We will be sending home an explanation along with
the report to help explain our assessments and grading. Conferences will take
place during the week of October 20-24th. The schedules will be
posted in the main hallway next to the office on Monday, October 13th.
Most of the time slots are in the early afternoon, with a few slots before
school. If your schedule is tight, please plan to sign up early. If the times
do not work for you, please contact us as soon as possible so we can look into
the possibility of rescheduling.
Organization and Management:
The students have all been making
great strides in organization and management over the past weeks. For the most
part, routines and schedules are becoming automatic and students are doing much
better with getting assignments turned in and meeting due dates. As we
mentioned in our earlier newsletter, there are so many new routines and norms
for which fourth graders must adapt—from using textbooks and loose leaf paper,
to varying groups and schedules, to juggling due dates with daily assignments.
All this completely aside from the very challenging curriculum that currently
includes weekly science experiments on water, a taxing (pun intended) unit on
state and federal government, and an extremely difficult unit on fractions
which presents a number of new math concepts. We would like to take a moment to
reiterate that while we are confident that all students can and will meet these
goals, we do not expect them to be accomplished overnight, nor do we presume
that they will all meet the expectations at the same rate or in the same way.
That being said, we know how difficult and frustrating these transitions can be
for students and parents alike. Please know that we are here to support you in
any way we can. If there are any specific issues or areas of concern, we
welcome your comments and suggestions and will assist in any way we can. If
there are specific issues you would like us to address at conference time,
please let us know ahead of time, so we can best prepare ourselves in advance.
Homework and the Web:
One of the biggest struggles for
fourth graders is managing their time to adequately keep up with longer term
assignments. Due to the nature of our combined class and the schedules it
brings with it, students often have classes on different days. This can prove
to be even more confusing to parents who do not participate in the rotations
each week. We wanted to help clarify some of these classes to hopefully provide
you with a better understanding of our time so that you may in turn help your
child prioritize their work.
Daily homework consists of DEAR
reading time (which is currently set at 20 minutes each night, but will bump to
30 minutes during the second trimester) and usually a math assignment to follow
up on the day’s lesson. These should be completed each night. Regular longer
term assignments can be expected weekly in Daybook and literature circles.
Daybook takes place on Tuesdays for all students and the assignments are always
due on the following Tuesday to be discussed during class. Literature circles
occur on Wednesdays and Thursdays, depending on our specialist rotation. The
blue group meets on Wednesdays and the red group on Thursdays. You can expect
that with very few exceptions, chapters and assignments will always be due one
week from the date they were given on your child’s literature day. Spelling is
the last area in which you can anticipate regular longer term work. Spelling
takes place on Wednesdays and tests happen every other week.
Of course there are exceptions. This
usually occurs when holidays, report cards, or field trips interrupt our
regular routine. As luck would have it, all three of these are making an impact
on us this week. Because the midterm is Friday (don’t worry, we don’t give
tests—for our purposes this simply means the end of our first grading period),
the final literature assignment will be due on this date, instead of next week.
Also because this, as well as our field trip on Wednesday, the Spelling test
will be given on Friday, October 10th.
We also wanted to remind parents
that in addition to your child’s assignment notebook, the homework should also
be posted on the classroom web page by 4:00 each day. This is a good place for
you to double check and verify due dates and changes. The page can be accessed
through the school’s website www.asbschool.org. We would also appreciate it if you could
take a moment to check over your child’s work each night to make sure it is
complete and accurate before signing off on the assignment notebook.
Fractions:
We are almost through the third week
of our fractions unit and are scheduled to test at the end of this week.
However, we are seeing that many students are overwhelmed by the amount of new
concepts presented in this chapter and are easily confused by the multi step
nature of computing many of the problems. For this reason we have cleared our
math schedule for next week, and will not be moving on to our next unit on
decimals until the week of the 20th. We are still planning to test
this week; then based on student score on the test,
students will be placed into two groups for math next week. Those students who
appear to have a clear grasp of the concepts presented will be placed in a
group that will focus next week on problem solving and extension activities, and those who need review will be placed into
smaller groups to focus on reviewing and practicing the concepts in new ways.
Those who use next week as a review will have an opportunity to retake the test
for an improved score at the end of next week.
Government:
We wanted to take a moment to let
you all know how proud we are of the student learning and especially the
enthusiasm surrounding our government unit. This week, fourth graders took a
quiz to check on current understandings, and the scores were overwhelmingly
positive!
We also have our 4th
grade legislature in place and our representatives and senators are hard at
work writing legislation for our class. Today, they held a public hearing and
convened for a special session to discuss an important bill they hope to pass
before the end of the week! Be sure to ask your child about how things progress
in this arena!
Next week, fourth graders will get
to see exactly how things work on a state level when we tour the capitol in
***REMINDER*** Book Orders are due this Friday, October 10th***
Have a great week and a relaxing
weekend!
The Fourth Grade Team
9/18/08
Fourth
Grade News
Field Trip:
Our first field trip has been planned. We will be
heading to
Homework:
This has been an area of stress and frustration for
all of us the last week. First, we would like you all to know that this is not
out of the ordinary at this point in the year and we are here to help students
(and parents) adjust to new routines and expectations in any way we can.
One major area of concern is getting homework and due
dates written down accurately and efficiently. Many students find it difficult
to do this at the end of the day, and often feel rushed and frustrated. One
suggestion we have is to get students in the habit of writing down assignments
as they receive them throughout the day, to alleviate some of the writing
necessary during the final moments of the school day. Another thing students
can try is to pre-write down recurring or long term assignments ahead of time;
such as 20 minutes of reading or the spelling test. We will practice this at
school, but you may want to discuss these options with your child at home.
Another area of concern is students not coming home
with materials necessary to complete the homework, such as textbooks or
worksheets. Again, this is fairly
normal-- it is important for us all to remember and be sympathetic to the fact
that this is the students’ first experience with taking on the responsibility
of regularly using textbooks and completing long term assignments. This is a
big step and a major transition for these young learners and it will take some
time before they are able to do this on a consistent basis independently. All that being said, we wish to help them along in this area as
quickly as possible, while also teaching responsibility and management skills
along the way. Below we have listed the main points of our current
policy.
- Except in the case
of an excused absence, homework is due on the date listed. Incomplete or
late homework will result in the student staying in for study hall to
finish or redo the assignment, and receiving a homework slip to be taken
home and signed by a parent. This is not a punishment but rather an
opportunity to keep the student on track and our way of keeping you
informed at home.
In the last couple weeks, we have had many parents
and students return to the school to retrieve forgotten items. This has become
problematic for a number of reasons. While we appreciate the effort made by
parents and students to attempt to get the work completed on time by coming
back into the classroom for necessary materials, it has brought to light a
number of issues.
- First, we have
issue with the lack of equity and equality it brings up. Not all students
have the opportunity to return to school and will therefore endure the
consequences of our current policy, while others with the resources to
retrieve the items will not. This also does not allow the teachers to keep
track of those students who are struggling with organization and
management, and therefore hinders us from monitoring their progress in
this area.
- Second, it brings
about a number of security and liability issues. As you are likely aware;
we had a number of thefts to the school last year. As a result, the school
as a whole has increased our security measures. The main building is now
locked during the day with the exception of the main doors which remain
unlocked until 4pm. At this point our school should be secure and no
unauthorized individuals are permitted access. The same should be true for
our classroom. The fourth grade team is contracted from 8am to 3:30pm and
should be available to parents and students during these hours. After
hours, upon leaving, it is our responsibility to make sure that we have
left our space safe and secure. At this time the responsibility and liability
of the space transfers to the Extended Care staff which uses the space
both before and after school hours. We ask that you please be respectful
of their duties and responsibilities, which are to run the extended day
program and monitor those students signed into their care—NOT to police
the fourth grade classroom, account for its security after hours, or field
parent calls and accommodate after hour access to the classroom space. The
classroom is open to parents and students during the above mentioned times,
but after these hours our expectation is that our space is closed and
secure unless prior arrangements have been made through the FAFC
coordinator, Robin Hendricks.
Volunteer
Opportunities:
We have a couple of volunteer opportunities which
were not filled on curriculum night. First, we are in desperate need of 4th
grade auction project co-chairs and/or committee. They have asked that each
class inform the auction chairs of the details of their project by September 24th
if possible—so if you are interested in helping out, please contact us as soon
as possible and we will get that info to our room parents.
We are also in need of one or two parents who can
help out with book orders. We send the forms to the students and collect all
orders, and are looking for someone who will tally them and place the order.
This can be done here at school or sent home for you to do in your spare time.
Please contact us if you would like to help out.
Mass
Reminder:
Tomorrow, we will celebrate the Mass of The Holy
Spirit at 1:30 in the gym. This mass will be said by Fr. Phillip, who is
visiting from our sister parish in
Thanks again for all you do. Have a wonderful
weekend.
The Fourth Grade Team
9/5/08
Dear parents:
Congratulations to us all on making it through the
first week of school! It’s hard to believe that it has only been 4 days. We
hope to see you all next week at Curriculum Night, but had a few things we
wanted to get out to you before then.
·
Curriculum
Night—Thank you all so much for
getting back to us regarding curriculum night. The overwhelming response was to
move the session to 6:00, followed by the informational meeting in the gym. If
you cannot attend this session, we will make sure that all handouts and
materials go home with your child. Also, thanks to those of you who provided
feedback on areas which you would like us to cover. If you think of anything
else, please email us.
·
Email—So far, only about a third of our parents have sent
us their contact email information. This is very important for us, as it allows
us to get information to individuals as well as the whole group quickly. If you
have not yet emailed us, please try to do so as soon as possible.
·
Room Parents—Our room moms for the year
are Claire Arrowsmith, Lynn O’Connor, Kristen Mulick, Marisol Joynt, and Stacie
Ludden. We met with them yesterday and they wished to also put together a
parent email list so they can contact you when needed. If possible, they would like you to email
Stacie Ludden at slludden@comcast.net.
·
Representatives—Next week, our class has the opportunity to elect
class representatives for our school’s student council. This is open to all
students who wish to take on this responsibility. If your child would like to
run, we have asked them to write a speech (no longer than 2 minutes) which they
will give to the class on Monday morning. Depending on how many students we
have on the ballot, we will likely do a primary election on Monday, followed by
a final election later in the week. In upcoming weeks, as part of our study of
government in social studies, we will also be working on creating a legislative
governing body for our class. This will be made up of 2 senators and 4
representatives from each side of the class. Those elected as class reps for
the school student council will not be able to run for these positions, so your
child will have to decide which, if any, position they might prefer.
We are looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday night.
Have a great weekend!
The Fourth Grade Team